


Gelassenheit und Wut

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Original Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Charles, Basically, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Bucky is a mutant, But do mind all the tags please, Cherik Big Bang, Concentration Camps, Erik and Charles adopt Bucky, Family Feels, Gen, Human Experimentation, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Medical Procedures, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mutilation, Nazis, Poor Erik, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Erik, Referenced - Freeform, So Much H/C, Somewhat graphic, The tags make this sound dark but really it's mostly fluff, World War II, he can talk to animals, mild though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 09:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20255731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: Erik Lehnsherr wasn’t looking for closure, or hope, in regards to the war. Killing Shaw had not brought him peace, after all. And in the intervening decades, he had experienced many things, but peace was not one of them. But then, sometimes the things that haunt us, truly are the only things that can heal us.In which the Winter Soldier misses a shot, Charles Xavier wins a chess game, and Erik Lehnsherr is forced to stop teasing his husband about adopting strays.





	Gelassenheit und Wut

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Art for Gelassenheit und Wut](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/508276) by vonderer. 

> AN: Section titles are from In Flanders Fields by John McCrae.  
Title roughly translates as Serenity and Rage.   
There are a few quotes from T. H. White's Once and Future King in here. 
> 
> Wonderful art for this fic done by vonderer: https://vonderer.tumblr.com/post/187023310636/

I We are the Dead

Once, it was whispered, there was a secret room beneath the Kremlin.

In that room, it was said, were contained all the secrets of the Soviet Union. Missile codes to secret projects to conquer the world, the location of Atlantis and the key to immortality. The secrets of an Empire that would be. Of an age that would come.

Once, a man looked into blank, dead eyes and smirked, _Soldat, you are helping to create a new world. _

Once, the same man had looked into wide, terrified eyes and laughed, _Sergeant, you will help to bring about the death of America. _

Once, it was said, there was a ghost, a ghost that went by the name Зимний Солдат.

Once, it was whispered, Mother Russia had a silent watcher, a ghostly weapon.

Once, it was said, the Winter Soldier, existed.

zzz

_Soldat_ did _not_ miss. _Could_ not miss. Ever.

It was a Truth. A Directive. A Law.

It simply _was_.

The Soldier lined up the shot, as it had done a thousand times before, a million.

It breathed. In. Out. _Out_.

_Bang_.

...The Soldier’s breath caught in its throat. Ice formed in its chest, suffocating and solid and impossible.

Distantly, disconnectedly, belated, the Soldat realized that this...this was _fear_.

zzz

If such a secret room had ever truly existed, it may have had records of The Soldat.

If such records had existed, they may have said how the Asset was acquired.

They may have said how it became The Soldat.

They may have said who _he_ _was_.

They did not, would not, have said who he _is_.

They did not, would not, could not have said, that once, he was a _person_.

zzz

“What a truly gorgeous day.” Time, Erik reflected with rueful resignation, may have stolen much of Charles Xavier’s naivete, along with all but the most vestigial remains of his once glorious hair.

But it stubbornly refused to touch his penchant for stating the obvious. Just as it left untouched the startling _blueness_ of his oldest friend’s eyes, blazing across at him from a wrinkled yet smirking visage.

Truly, Charles was putting the very sky to shame, on this most agreeable morning.

A chuckle that sounded suspiciously like triumph erupted from Charles, even as Erik’s fingers flicked slightly, and Charles’ queen hopped obligingly to Erik’s side of the board.

“Something amuses you, Charles?” A bishop joined the queen. Charles’ smile remained unwaveringly optimistic. How very _Charles_.

A slight whir of wheels on cobbles cut the morning air, as Charles leaned across the table to move one of his rapidly dwindling forces to a more advantageous position. Rather too late.

_Really, Erik, that isn’t very sporting. _Erik snorted, and moved a pawn ever closer to victory.

_Chess isn’t about sportsmanship, old friend. _Charles’ last pawn hit Erik’s side of the little table they were hunched around, far too much tweed and leather between them, even for a decidedly chilly April morning.

They were not getting any younger, either of them. Charles snorted quietly, his eyes still fixed upon the board. _Speak for yourself, my friend_.

Erik nudged a rook sideways with his mind, capturing the last of Charles’ castles. _Still playing with honour I see-_

“Check.” The crispness of the word shattered the stillness about them, causing Erik to jerk the entire set an inch into the air in surprise. Charles slid his last remaining rook across the board, lining up perfectly with Erik’s king. Erik felt his jaw begin to unhinge, even as warm fondness coated his tongue, “Why my dear Charles, you never cease to surprise me it seems–”

_Crack! _All across the park, flocks of crows and ravens and starlings broke into alarmed calls, taking to the air in great clouds, wing beats seeming to fill the sky.

Erik was up and turning before the first bird took wing, sliding Charles away from the table and towards his outstretched hand, his other clenching into a fist, out and closed and down, so fast his arm was practically a blur.

His fingers found purchase on the frigid metal of a wheelrim in the same moment something hard and yet soft slammed into his free glove palm with a firm _thwack_.

It wasn’t a coin. Erik struggled to concencrate on that, struggled to feel the contours and edges of the bullet, clear and clean lead and steel, not Nazi gold dripping with blood.

_Erik_. The voice sounds painful, sounds raw and bleeding and _broken_, for all that it carries not more sound and weight than a puff of air in a gale.

_Charles...?_ Erik reaches out with his hands and his senses and his heart, desperately seeking the tang and tingle of blood rich in iron, gushing or spurting or even trickling where it never should.

Nothing. A flock of crows circles over their heads, thick enough to create a shadow of wing beats and snapping beaks, even as Charles wraps his hands securely in Erik’s lapels, pulling them closer together, resting their wrinkled foreheads against one another.

_Erik...breath. It’s all right, I’m here_. And then, firm hands gentling his brow and brushing through wiry, aging hair, words that even after a lifetime or more, Charles would normally never dare utter, even in the safety of their own heads.

_Alles ist gut, Eri_k. Their breaths catch in the same moment, hanging in the morning air like so much ephemeral smoke.

The bullet is hot and burning in his palm even through the fine leather of his gloves, presents from Charles that had still seemed so extravagant, even after decades of intermittent co-habiting in a mansion big enough to literally hide an elephant in the garage.

_That_ had been an interesting afternoon indeed.

Charles breaths out, his breath warm and heavy on Erik’s cheek.

Above, the crows wheel away as abruptly as they had stopped.

Around them, the world snaps back into focus, as if time itself as once again sped up.

Erik flicks an almost absent finger towards the clock tower in the distance. That habit of Charles’ has been slightly more problematic since the invention of cellular phones. Slightly.

Across the lawns, at the edge of the ancient elms framing the park, something silver gleams for a moment in the dawn light.

Charles a reasurringly bulk against his side, warm and _alive_, Erik manages to temper the violent force of his _pull_. Even if just slightly.

Later, much, _much_ later, Hank will estimate that restraint saved their would be assassin’s life.

Then, Erik blinks slowly at the sight before them, barely registering the mask or the red star or the greasy hair or the hollow eyes.

He is _far_ too mesmerized by the sheer _weight_ and _bulk_ of the metal..._thing_ caught in the grasp of his outstretched power.

The ingenuity, the power, the cruelty. The..._inhumanity_. Erik tried very hard not to swallow his own tongue at the irony burning across it.

Beside him, Charles gives out a quiet gasp, barely more than a wounded breath, painful in its soundless anguish. Erik would recognize that tone anywhere.

He twitched a screw against bone experimentally.

The boy didn’t so much as flinch.

Erik looked at Charles. Charles looked at Erik.

“Darling...”

“We’re keeping this one, Charles.”

Neither of them is sure who speaks first.

It hardly matters though.

When a rather bewildered jogger finally calls the cops to report a shot being fired in the park, there is not a soul left at the chess boards.

Not even a bird.

zzz

On the 14 of February, 1945, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th fell from a speeding train into a ravine somewhere in the Alps.

Fifty-eight years later, in April of 2003, The Winter Soldier was sent to assassinate the foremost mutant rights activists and leaders of their generation.

Naturally, the shot missed.

Also naturally, instead of killing their would be assassin, Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier decided instead to do something remarkable.

They decided to save him.

II Short days ago

“Wunderkind.” Charles tries. He really, really _tries_ not to flinch.

Not to dry in a rush of air, half way between a gasp and a scream. Tries not to let his shields slip. Not to flood the entire room, the entire mansion, the entire _state_ with _rage_.

With raged grief and immeasurable anguish, a grief and anguish that has been both his own and not for the past forty odd years.

_That was what Shaw/Schmidt called you/me_.

Neither of them is sure who thought it first, and for once, Erik’s eyes are neither sharp with reproach nor heavy with anger when he turns in the driver’s seat to regard Charles.

A semi-truck passes their little car, the backwash of mud and gravel rattling against the windows.

Neither of them flinch, Charles tightening his hand the merest fraction on Erik’s knee the only visible sign of tension within the car.

_Next time you steal a vehicle, Erik, perhaps choose one that is a little less..._

Charles’ eyes scanned the mildew making a valient attempt to consume the dashboard before the copious rust could finish the job, and the thought died unfinished between them.

Erik chuckled, raspy and wet, yet warm and rich. _Are you offering to embark on a life of crime with me, Charles?_

Outside, rain and wind whipped through tall stands of trees, the only sound for miles the wooshing of the barren tires on the cracked backroad asphalt.

Inside, Charles wrapped the warmth of that chuckle around them all, around the achingly fresh memory of Erik’s hand ghosting lightly over the slumped frame of their would be assassin, the boy’s mangled shoulder bleeding motor oil and yellowish puss in equal measure, staining their hands and jacket sleeves and faces.

_I wonder what they called him_. Erik’s voice was so very old when he said it, the lines on his face never having looked deeper.

Charles folded the warmth of this moment, here and now, tighter and snugger about the car, about them, just as they had wrapped their jackets, leather over twead, about the unconscious form currently occupying their acquired transportation’s somewhat questionable rear seat.

And that, that is how to fight Nazis with nothing but a stolen, decomposing delorean and the power of love.

zzz

It was so dark. Dark and cold and suffocating.

The Asset was used to pain. Used to the dark. Used to cold.

What he _wasn’t_ used to, was _warmth_. Oh, there was cold, but not the frigid fissure of the chamber, ice blasting against his every pore.

There was darkness, but not the endless, suffocating dark of the cell.

There was pain, but not the blasting, writhing, whitening agony of the chair.

There was the sound of rain on glass, the feel of fabric against his skin. The smell of damp in the air, but also the smell of cologne and leather.

There was a voice in his head, deep and melodious and strange. Almost soothing.

There was another voice in the air, softly accented and rich as a deep ocean, rough and yet smooth as old whiskey.

And for the first time in six decades, the Asset closed his eyes, breathed out, and deeply, truly, safely, _slept_.

III We lived, felt dawn

_James_. He spun in place, ice crunching under his feet.

Metal walls, concrete floors and rusty bars.

A chair. A _train_.

_James-_ A swipe of a hand through the air, striking at a shadow. A flesh hand. A metal hand.

Pain. So much pain.

_Who are you?! _Silence, thick and suffocating.

Electrodes on his temples, fingers on his skull, scalpels flashing through the air.

_Stevie!_ A hand on his shoulder, falling away into nothing.

_James_. A step forward, along a dirty alley, through a barren forrest, across a snowy expanse.

A rolling lawn, green and dotted with laughing children.

_James Buchanan Barnes_.

He turned, met eyes as blue as the ocean, and finally found the words to ask,

“Who the hell is James Buchanan Barnes?”

The eyes smiled, the air sparked, and the world went away.

zzz

The blood was old. Stale and clotted and near black, puss and something Hank was really, _really_ hoping was _not_ motor oil coating the screws with a thick film and spread across exposed muscle and bone in a most grotesque fashion.

Poised over the operating table, his hands tense and splayed just far enough above the sterile field to be both feasible and _somewhat_ sterile, Erik had never looked more focused.

Nor so old. Hank passed Jean a swab, forcing his eyelids to blink rapidly. He could not afford to cry right now. Not even in the face of Erik’s utter _devestation_.

Not even in the scent of _Charles’_ tears, which had been falling unchecked down his cheeks for the last hour, staining his mask and falling into their patient’s freshly cleaned hair where it pooled on the surgical drapes.

_Clunk_. Anther screw found its way to the tray, fresh blood squelching out to stain their gloves, warring with the black and green and yellow.

_“Sechszehn.” Seventeen_.

Hank tried not to think about it, he really, truly did, but the question rose unbidden, unquenchable in its morbid horror.

_How_ had they even installed such a thing, in the 19_40s_?

At the head of the table, Charles actually let out a sound of physical pain, “Henry, _please_...”

Erik’s face lost a little more colour.

Beneath their hands, even with enough drugs in his system to fell a bull elephant, even with the full weight of _Charles Xavier_ cushioning his mind, their patient continued to twitch and moan.

And for the first time in his life, for all that he grew up as a boy with awkward glasses and lion feet, Hank McCoy found it within himself to _hate_ humanity.

zzz

The scream rends the air, startling all of them from sleep.

Erik, who had decidedly _not_ been sleeping, reached the doorway at the same time Hank did, his fur a dishevelled mess of antiseptic and dried blood. Erik deliberately did not look at his own hands, and the marks he knew would left on the metalic walls.

Walls that rippled and warped, changing from cold blue to soothing orange, almost of their own accord.

Wrapped in a dressing gown, braced against the headboard of the sturdiest fourposter bed Hank had been able to drag down the old stairs, his oldest friend’s arms shook with tremors at the effort of holding onto the lump of bandages and terror tossing like a demon upon the bed.

No words passed the boy’s lips, his jaw clenched so tight Erik wonder for a moment if he was actually having a seizure.

A twitch, a flinch, and then, again, that terrible, awful noise ripped through the air.

Erik got no sleep that night, or many nights after, his face wet with tears, his arms and powers aching where they wrapped about the figures huddled on the bed, and his ears wringing with the echoes of Charles Xavier’s screams.

IV Saw Sunset Glow

Waking up was always cold.

James isn’t sure how he remembers that, he wishes he didn’t, but he does.

It was always, _always_ cold.

So when he cracks his eyes open at last, despite the taste of blood upon his lips, despite the gleam of metal in the corner of his eye, despite the tense faces about him, James knew that this time, something was different.

Because for the first time in years beyond count, he was _warm_.

zzz

It is Erik who calms him down. The irony isn’t lost on anyone, that this is a surprise.

Least of all Logan, freshly returned from a student prospective that _wasn’t_ meant to end in him juggling _two_ kids on the back of his motorbike and flooring it for the mansion, who stalks into the infirmary with fire in his eyes and is promptly thrown backwards by the merest _flick_ of Erik’s power.

Charles doens’t even look in his direction as the throw is abruptly turned into a feather light return trip to the ground, and Erik doesn’t so much as glare at _either_ of them, and _that_ is what tips Logan off to the seriousness of the situation.

That, and the petrified amputee attempting to _melt_ into the far corner of the infirmary.

Logan, being Logan, takes a good look at the scruffy, blood and tear form and blurts out, “What the hell did they _do_ to you, Bub?”

Because he’s one too many criminal parents and apathetic doctors and teachers and social workers to care who _they_ are any longer, not when all he wants to do is fucking _stab something_.

Which is how his claws come out of their own accord, the _snikt_ seeming to echo on forever off the metalic surfaces around them.

Charles is opening his mouth to speak, to sooth, to _try_, when it all goes even more sideways than before, if with a few odd...twists.

Because somehow, their newest stray peaks out from the corner for a moment, sees Logan’s claws, sees the pain from their emergence writ on his face, that pain that no amount of years has ever quite been able to erase or bury, sees the metalic walls about them, adds one, one, and one, and somehow, gets _five_.

And promptly decides that _Logan_ is the one that needs to be protected.

zzz

Bucky does _not_ come out of the corner. Rather, Logan ends up in the corner with him.

Somehow, nothing and nobody is impaled in the halfmad scramble that is the Winter Soldier’s rather successful efforts to stuff _The Wolverine_ into his _nice, safe corner_.

Possibly this is due to Charles projecting a frankly suffocating amount of calm at the room in general.

Possibly this is due to Hank getting them a blanket.

Possibly this is due to Logan keeping his mouth firmly shut.

Most likely however, it is due to Erik storming back into the room, striding up to their corner, and depositing something in Logan’s lap.

Something both smooth and silky, and yet at the same time, warm and furry.

Logan blinks, momentarily forgetting the sweaty, feverish form plastered about his person in a jumble of too few limbs and too many firearms.

“Is this Arty’s dang rabbit? Wrapped in your _cape?_”

Erik manages to pull off both nonchalant and disapproving with a single eyebrow raise.

“I see your powers of observation remain as sharp as ever, Wolverine.”

Charles chooses that moment to interject. “Er_ik_, you beautiful, _brilliant_ man.”

Logan is half-way through, “This is hardly the time fer yer flirtin Chuck-” when he fully registers the _break_ in the man’s voice. Or notices the wetness in Erik’s eyes.

He never does figure out the significance however, because the little critter chooses that moment to _hop over Logan’s shoulder into the boy’s arms._ Well, arm, at any rate.

The boy doesn’t let go of Logan. And he only leaves the corner by about a foot and a half. But he falls asleep crying into Logan’s chest, the bunny clasped protectively between them, and even the Wolverine hasn’t the heart to disturb him.

zzz

_“Whatcha reading us tonight Stevie?” They had been happy. He remembers that. Even though they were often too cold to do anything but cling together for warmth, even though there was never enough to eat, even though Steve was always, _always_ sick. _

_Even though it was 1934 and the great depression was as choking and cloying and destroying as the history books would always imagine. Somehow, they were _happy_. _

Bucky starred at the toast on the plate before him, cut into perfect diamonds, just the right amount of butter and apple-jam on each slice. His stomach turned over painfully.

Hydra...had not been big on such things as toast.

Actually, they hadn’t been big on such things as _food_.

Across the vast kitchen table, Erik’s newspaper rattled alarmingly. Bucky eyed the toast for another minute.

_“Hey Stevie, catch!” An apple whistled through the air, a cheeky grin splitting a thin face, blue eyes wide and sparkling at the fruit was lobbed back from whence it came with unairing accuracy. _

Charles deliberately did _not_ pause his teacup on its journey back to its saucer, his eyes warm and carefully _not_ haunted as he calmly switched his own english muffin-plain with just a dusting of cinnamon-for Bucky’s toast. “Try this James, it’s an excellent flour mix.”

Erik’s newspaper twitched slightly, a cough that sounded suspiciously like a suppressed chuckle filling the kitchen.

Bucky gazed at the plate helplessly, his eyes wide and his voice raw as he gazed up at the Professor.

“I-I think...I think I forgot how...,” He swallowed. It was painful on his dry throat. “How to be...” The newspaper lowered carefully, Erik’s eye brows bushy and almost thunderous.

“My dear boy, forgetting how to be human is rather the point of this place.” Bucky flicked his eyes to Charles, who was somehow managing to both smile beautifically and shake his head in exasperation at his partner’s words.

Bucky couldn’t quite bring himself to try the scones either. But when the mouse from the upstairs landing skirting ran across his hand and perched hopefully on the side of his plate, Bucky didn’t flinch, or run away, or freeze.

And when Erik just kept reading his by now rather crumpled newspaper, and Charles just kept sipping his tea, Bucky found the courage to reach out a shaking finger, and gently brush the top of the mouse’s head.

And when the world didn’t end, when the pain didn’t come, he found the courage to raise his eyes to Charles’, and found the words to finally, truly, be _heard_.

“Mipsie likes raisin toast better.”

Food was a scarcity when Bucky was growing up. It was even scarcer in the War.

In Hydra, it was a priveliege that rarely applied to the Asset.

In Westchester though, Bucky started his mornings by feeding raisin toast to his new friend, Mipsie the field mouse who lived part time in the skirting board on the upstairs landing.

Some mornings, Erik read his newspaper. Some mornings, Charles sipped his tea. Some mornings, Hank crunched his sausages.

Some mornings, Logan wandered in and out, knawing on something that might have been beef jerky in another life.

And some mornings, Bucky even reached out a tentative hand, grasped the raisin toast in a shaky grip, brought it to his lips, and took a bite.

It was hard to swallow, hot and sticky and unfamiliar in his throat. It hurt. It was hard.

_“Hey Buck, look what I got us! Raisins!”_

But some days, and more days than less these days, it is the best thing he can ever remember tasting.

zzz

_“The best thing for being sad, is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”_

“My dear Charles, are you by any chance trying to tell us something?” That rather arid _us_ apparently includes Bucky, if Erik’s expansive hand sweep was anything to judge by.

Then again, everything Erik Lehnsherr did _was_ dramatic, it seemed to James.

A chuckle erupted from somewhere to his right, the sound of pages rustling as a book was set aside. The slight whirr of electric wheels was as soft as a purr in the stillness of the autumn afternoon. From his place by the window, an obliging patch of sun warming his cheek, James forces himself not to jump, to startle, to even twitch.

_It’s just the Professor. He’d never hurt you. He’d never let anyone hurt you. _

Logan repeated that to James, everytime he was the one to wake him from a nightmare.

James found it to be the most comforting thing he’d heard in nearly a hundred years.

The wheels paused, tweed rustling against cotton as the Professor turned towards the window, where his long suffering lover was currently slouched artfully along the window seat, a hat propped jauntily across his eyes. 

“Do you hear that, old friend? _Someone_ around here appreciates my bedside manner.” Peggy’s british accent had been the first one Bucky had ever heard, or at least the only one he can still remember.

Her accent had been all clipped vowels and snarky sass, fierce and proper and _hot_.

Between the sweater vests and tea, taste in literature and taste in boyfriends, Charles’ voice reminds James of nothing so much as the oddest mix of _both_ Stevie and Peggy. For all that the Professor enunciates like the English language is being irrevocably trashed, one teenager at a time. 

Charles...is not unlike what Bucky had pictured Stevie’s and Peg’s kids wouldve been like, that one night they were all out dancing until dawn, the champagne allowing dreams and wishes of a time _after-the-war_ to, for once, be uttered as more than half-fervent prayers.

Charles’ breath catches in the same moment Erik finally shifts, pushing the hat up with one wrinkled hand, and slanting an eyebrow at his lover. “Really Charles, it’s a wonder you don’t make the poor boy cry _every_ time you talk to him, at this rate.”

Half-wedged under the study desk, not quite hiding but not quite ready to expose his back to the world, even if that world spanned little more than the confines of Charles’ study on a _good _day, James flicked wary yet amused eyes between the men now glaring-staring at each other.

Bucky was _pretty _sure it was only in jest.

Erik’s chuckle was drier than a martini with rye. Bucky just about remembered what that tasted like. Just about.

“Oh my dear Charles, I am so _glad_ we kept this one.” Charles looked torn between wanting to strangle Erik and wanting to kiss him breatheless.

Bucky _thinks_, on the very best days, that he almost remembers looking at Stevie that way once.

_Almost_.

James edged out from under the desk just a tad, far enough to look them both in the eye.

_Well, I think you’re both rather swell. For a pair a’ old guys_.

He _feels_ the moment the stunned silence erupts into silent laughter, gales and gales of it that chime like silenced bells against his brain.

Maybe one day, Bucky will find the courage to emerge from under the desk and say the words aloud. Maybe one day.

But for today, Charles and Erik leaning upon each other, breatheless with laughter only the _three_ of them can hear, James holds onto the feeling blossoming in his chest.

A feeling that later, as he creeps to the edge of Charles’ chair and rests his head against the wheel rim, as he watches Erik tangle his fingers with the Professor’s and make a move without even _looking_, as lets the warmth of this day, this moment, curl into his chest and produce something _warm_, a feeling that he will finally recognize as _safety. _

V Loved and were (are) loved

The roof of the mansion is only five stories tall. For a boy from Brooklyn, that hardly qualifies as tall. For a former Hydra Asset who spent much of the last century trapped in the depths of a variety of laboratories, such a height is nothing to sneeze at.

For Bucky, it is strangely soothing, perching on the edge, feet dangling in open air, his remaining hand curling against the parrapet until the stone is almost warm to the touch.

Erik joins him one day, dropping casually down beside him.

Naturally, he flew up. Bucky considers mentioning that there are stairs. And an elevator. And a rather ingenious metal ramp.

But then, he can’t really comment, because, well, _he_ didn’t use any of those methods either. He jumped.

Neither of them say a word. No words are needed. Not with Charles curled against their minds, as warm and real as if he was sitting beside them, instead of preparing a lesson plan several stories below their feet. Even for Bucky, Charles was _quite_ the morning person.

As the first pink smudges paint farthest off hills a dusky rose, a wrinkled hand covers Bucky’s, the band of his wedding ring a point of warmth in the cold morning air.

Erik squeezes his hand. Bucky squeezes back.

And together, they settle in to watch the dawn.

zzz

On the three hundreth day since Bucky came to the school, still too skinny by half, sweaty and shaking from a night terror, faceless bodies and nameless voices crowding his every breath, waking and sleeping, Erik has had enough.

He leans in the doorway, his hand clenched into a fist, until Bucky’s trembling has calmed as much as it ever does, until Charles’ tears have dried as much as they ever do.

Bucky’s face is still half buried in the Professor’s dressing gown clad shoulder, his mussed hair and red rimmed eyes making him look even younger than he already always does.

Yet the flash of metal, when it comes, catches his eyes and holds them, dull silver objects making nary a sound as they floated in an ever more frenzied circle about the center of the room.

A bullet. A coin. A screw.

The symbolism of it lies heavy in the already dusty air, lifetimes worth of memories thick across all their tongues.

Erik arches an eyebrow, and somehow, it gives James the strength to find his voice.

“I thought we couldn’t build the future by avenging the past.” His words are low and raspy and broken, but there is enough of an ironic edge there that it is Charles who huffs out a laugh.

And in a moment that would have once made Erik’s heart sing, but now just makes him want to weep, it is _Charles_ who replies, his voice low and firm and _fierce_, “Building a future means nothing if the past continues to haunt our present, James.” A hand grasped Erik’s, another catching Bucky’s chin and holding. “It is alright to be angry, James. It is alright to feel pain, and grief, and _rage_.” Charles’ voice cracked at that last, and it was all Erik could do to prevent the tears from spilling out of his brimming eyes and down his aching cheeks.

A thrum ran through the room, through the air, through them. A spark of defiance, of anger, of _rage_ so unquenchable it took Erik’s breath away.

It made him want to scream.

It made him want to cheer.

And when Charles continues, the ferocity in his voice, the conviction, the passion, does not surprise Erik. “Bucky...it is all right to _feel_.”

And when Charles comes down to breakfast one morning with a perfectly mapped out plan of how to search out and _destroy_ Hydra, piece by bloody piece, Erik is not in the least surprised by that either.

He has long since learned that there is nothing Charles Xavier will put in front of those he loves.

Not even peace.

zzz

One day, someday, the man once known as Magneto will sit quietly beside the former Winter Soldier, watching Bucky watching Arty feed Mopsy a carrot.

And in that moment of blissful, blissful _peace_, Erik will draw in the deepest of breaths, and find the words to at last say, “My liebling talked to animals.”

And in that next moment of hushed breathing, Bucky Barnes will watch Erik Lehnsherr with liquid brown eyes, and know just the right thing to say, “What was her name?”

And tears upon both their cheeks, Mopsy a warm weight brushing against their entwined hands, decades of memories lost and lives destroyed laying heavy in the air, Erik will finally, finally be able to say his daughter’s name.

“Nina. Her name was Nina.”

zzz

The footfalls are barely audible, bare skin against metal flooring.

Hank hears them anyway, his ears twitching from the moment the elevator door had dinged, miles and miles down the corridors.

“Hello James.” The footsteps pause in the doorway.

The pause seems endless.

Then, with a lurch of breath and a rush of speech, his favourite patient is suddenly just _there_, bloody and scratched but alive and awake in a way he is more and more with each passing day.

“Hey H-Hank, think you could patch me up?”

The voice is tremulous, the eyes skittering this way and that, but nothing can quench the force of Hank McCoy’s smile.

“It would be my pleasure, James.”

Of the many and varied thinks Hank has found since following Charles Xavier back to this school, _hope_ remains the most precious of all of them.

zzz

He hitches a ride on Logan’s motorbike, arm wrapped firm about the shoulders of the other man’s leather jacket, the green and orange stripes leaving dents in his cheek, he was clinging so hard.

Logan doesn’t mention it.

He just parks quietly at the gate, settles against the bike frame, and plays for nonchalance, “I’ll be waiting right here Bub.” He misses it by a country mile, but neither of them mention that either.

James wanders more than he marches, his feet dragging and his hand worrying at the side of already frayed jeans. Overhead, birds chirp with the first truly warm day of a decidely chilly spring.

He finds the grave right where it should be, hesitating for a long moment under the boughs of an obliging elm.

When he kneels, it is awkward and stilted. He’s still not used to the lack of _weight_.

Never mind the lack of _pain_.

He brushes a scarred knuckle against stone letters. He busted up that knuckle punching out Dougie Jones in fifth grade, for the crime of stealing Stevie’s lunch.

The stone is cold to the touch.

Bucky blinks back a tear, his hand cradling around the coin threaded through a chain on his neck, a screw and a bullet tinkling against them.

“I’m so sorry, Howie.”

zzz

His eyes are as blue as they ever were. It is that thought that finally unfreezes James, finally gives him the strength to brush the hair from his face, and flash a boyish grin at the white face blinking at him from the open mansion door.

Behind his back, in the depths of the house, the whir of Charles’ chair is a perfect counterpoint to Erik’s measured steps.

The mouse that lives in the upstairs wainscotting gives a reassuring squeak from the vicinity of his jacket collar. It likes the warm of the leather.

Bucky draws in a deep breath, and lets it go.

“Hey, Stevie.”

And finally, truly, finds his way back home.


End file.
